Not originated by Yogi Berra — the line dates to 1937Laura Riding & Robert GravesRiding 1901–1991 · Graves 1895–1985 · poets and co-editors of the journal Epilogue
Quote Investigator’s earliest evidence is a 1937 piece by Laura Riding and Robert Graves in their journal Epilogue: “the future is not what it used to be” — the first instance located in English, with Paul Valéry writing a French version the same year. The colloquial “ain’t” wording is first documented in 1973, credited to an English professor; Yogi Berra claimed and popularised it later, and Wikiquote files it under his Misattributed section.
“The future ain't what it used to be” popularised by Yogi Berra, but not his. Quote Investigator's earliest evidence is 1937: Laura Riding and Robert Graves in the journal Epilogue ("the future is not what it used to be"), with a French version by Paul Valéry the same year. The "ain't" wording is first documented in 1973. Source: Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be" (6 Dec 2012).
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Yogi Berra. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
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Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The future ain't what it used to be". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The earliest documented instance
Earliest English instance
“From a Private Correspondence on Reality,” by Laura Riding and Robert Graves
Published in
Epilogue, the critical journal they edited, 1937
French parallel
Paul Valéry, “Notre Destin et Les Lettres” (1937)
Translation
English as “Our Destiny and Literature” in Reflections on the World Today, trans. Francis Scarfe (Pantheon, 1948)
The human mind has reached the end of temporal progress: the future is not what it used to be.
1937 · Epilogue
As transcribed by Quote Investigator from the 1937 Epilogue piece. Note the wording: no “ain’t” — that colloquial form is not documented until 1973.
1937 — the first English instance. Laura Riding and Robert Graves write “the future is not what it used to be” in their journal Epilogue, the earliest evidence located by Quote Investigator ↗.
1937 / 1948 — Valéry in French, then in English. “Notre Destin et Les Lettres” carries the same idea; the essay appears in English as “Our Destiny and Literature” in Reflections on the World Today, translated by Francis Scarfe and published by Pantheon in 1948 — Internet Archive ↗.
1973 — the “ain’t” appears. A Boston Globe article credits the colloquial form to English professor Gary Goshgarian, per Quote Investigator ↗.
1998 — Berra claims it.The Yogi Book presents the saying as his, with no date given and a 1974 photograph alongside; Wikiquote nonetheless lists it among his misattributed lines ↗.
No public-domain claim is made here. The exact “ain’t” wording has no identified authored source — its earliest documented appearance is a 1973 newspaper article — and every work in the trail was first published after 1930: the 1937 Epilogue piece by Riding and Graves, Valéry’s 1937 essay, the 1948 Scarfe translation and Berra’s own book all remain within copyright terms in the United States.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
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Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and why
This is a textbook quote-magnet case: an old bit of wordplay that drifted onto a famous, funny name and stuck there.
✕
The whole lineYogi Berra Popularised, not coined
Berra claimed the expression in his 1998 volume The Yogi Book, without giving a date; the entry was accompanied by a 1974 photograph, per Quote Investigator ↗. The saying was already in print decades earlier, and Wikiquote files it under Misattributed on his quote page ↗.
✕
The idea, in FrenchPaul Valéry Genuine — but a different sentence
Valéry wrote in 1937, in the essay “Notre Destin et Les Lettres,” “L’avenir est comme le reste: il n’est plus ce qu’il était,” rendered in English in 1948 as “The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be” — a real source for the thought, but not for the snappy English wording, per Quote Investigator ↗.
✕
The “ain’t” wordingGary Goshgarian Earliest documented use of this form
Quote Investigator’s earliest citation using “ain’t” is a 1973 Boston Globe article, where the line is ascribed to English professor Gary Goshgarian — see the chronology ↗. That is an attestation, not proof of coinage.
✓Best evidence: the saying appears in English in 1937 with Laura Riding and Robert Graves, and in French the same year with Paul Valéry; the “ain’t” form is first documented in 1973 and Yogi Berra made it famous — Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why this one sticks to Yogi
Yogi Berra is one of the great quote magnets: a beloved, funny, plain-spoken man whose real verbal tics made almost any paradox sound like his. He knew it himself — he titled his own collection The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said.
This line fits the mould perfectly, but the joke was already in print in 1937, in a journal edited by two very literary poets, and again the same year in French from Paul Valéry. What Berra did was give it the shrug and the “ain’t” — and once a saying is in his voice, it tends to stay there.
He popularised it. He didn’t coin it.
Read the full story
Quote Investigator’s chronology shows the idea circulating steadily for decades before Berra was ever attached to it: a 1959 Milwaukee Sentinel instance with no attribution, a 1962 Chicago Tribune notice of a talk titled “The Future Is Not What it Used to Be,” and a 1975 Reader’s Digest dictionary crediting Valéry.
The specifically colloquial form — with “ain’t” — appears in a 1973 Boston Globe article, where it is credited to English professor Gary Goshgarian, per Quote Investigator.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Riding 1901–1991 · Graves 1895–1985 · poets, critics and co-editors of Epilogue
Laura Riding (1901–1991) was an American poet, critic and novelist; Robert Graves (1895–1985) was the English poet, novelist and critic behind Goodbye to All That and I, Claudius. After meeting in the mid-1920s the pair moved to Deià, Mallorca, where they ran the Seizin Press and founded and edited the critical magazine Epilogue, published between 1935 and 1938. It is in a 1937 Epilogue piece, “From a Private Correspondence on Reality,” that Quote Investigator finds the earliest English instance of the saying that would later travel the world in Yogi Berra’s voice.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance
Laura Riding and Robert Graves, "From a Private Correspondence on Reality," Epilogue (1937), as documented in "Quote Origin: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be," Quote Investigator, December 6, 2012, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/06/future-not-used/. Compare Paul Valéry, "Our Destiny and Literature," in Reflections on the World Today, trans. Francis Scarfe (New York: Pantheon, 1948).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The future ain't what it used to be’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-future-aint-what-it-used-to-be/